The "Last Suppers" Project

[SoCalDem]

January 18, 2011
http://www.good.is/post/last-suppers-james-reynolds-photographs-of-death-row-inmates-final-meals/
The death penalty was reinstated 34 years ago (in the UK, apparently) this week. To mark the date, we look at a photo series of last meal requests from death row inmates. James Reynolds is a London photographer who documented the final requests of former death row inmates after seeing a small list in Schott's Food and Drink Miscellany. He bought prison trays—replicas of the ones they actually use in maximum security prisons—off the internet and began staging these "Last Suppers."

I spoke with Reynolds over email.

GOOD: What were you trying to convey about these last requests?

JAMES REYNOLDS: I saw a small list of what a few death row prisoners had chosen for their last meals before their deaths and I wondered what they would look like as a visual image. After all, these meals would be one of the last things these prisoners see before they die. At first I just wanted to see what these meals looked like on the iconic prison tray. I wanted to get the viewer to think, or have an opinion. I'd like to think that the photographs make them think, what thought that is, I am not sure, as I myself had more thoughts the more I looked at them. What would my last meal be? What kind of people were these prisoners? Why did they choose that particular meal? What crime did they commit?

G: Are there any particular meals that spoke to you?

JR: I tried to research why each prisoner chose what they did, but only discovered why the single olive was chosen. This olive was un-pitted, and the thinking behind it was that the inmate thought that after being executed and buried, an olive tree—a symbol of peace—would grow from him. It was indeed a very profound thought or idea, but an olive tree has not yet been found on his grave.

G: So when you were done photographing these, did you eat the meals?

JR: There were some foods, for example, the KFC or the ice cream, that either looked very unappetizing, smelled bad, or were inedible. Most of the food I simply threw away, but things like the fruits I kept and eventually ate. I must say I didn't really think about what these foods meant to certain people or what they represented in the photographs. Fortunately, I had eaten most of the food before I saw the photographs.

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